Oh, sure, you love your adorable collection of tacky shot glasses from souvenir shoppes you’ve hit on your travels. But your guests are getting tired of them. Yes, they are. They’re too polite to say so, mostly because it’s your booze they’re drinking and all, but they long for something more Caesar’s Palace and less Spam Museum. Here’s what you cook up in your kitchen and trot out next time you liquor up the guests:
First, the cucumber sake cup – These are about as simple as you can get, go great with take-out sushi, and elegant in a Martha Stewarty way. Get some nice cucumbers, preferably Japanese, a vegetable peeler, a knife and an apple corer and/or melon baller. Slice the cucumbers into 2″ pieces. Peel them artistically into stripes, or mostly square. make sure they sit straight. With a melon baller and apple corer, make a void into which the sake is poured. Don’t accidentally put a hole in the bottom. Fill the cucumber with sake, arrange on a tray, and let the salad course begin.
Chocolate Liqueur Cups are rather 1960′s retro Playboy Mansion and not often seen today, but a tasty dessert novelty. They can be purchased, but are easy to make at home. The store-bought ones are stout and elegant, and the home-made ones can look acceptably grown-up without investing in expensive and hard-to-find molds. Pick up some small candy-makers’ foil cups at a craft store, baking supplier, or better groceries – they’re unfortunately fluted like a little cupcake liners which are too cute for this application, but we have a way to deal with this adorable pitfall.
In a small heavy saucpan, melt 1/2 cup of semisweet chocolate pieces. You can use a double boiler for safely melting without burning, or the chocolate can be microwaved. Stir constantly over low heat until chocolate begins to melt. Remove from heat and stir till smooth.
Flip about 20 of the small foil cups upside-down on a sheet of waxed paper. With a small paintbrush, brush about a teaspoon melted chocolate onto bottoms and sides of foil cups. Chill till hardened, then peel the foil cups from inside the chocolate shells.
This same technique works with foil-lined ice cube trays or foil-lined egg carton chambers, depending on how improvisational you are compelled to be.
Chocolate liqueur cups go well with Kahlua, creme de menthe, Grand Marnier, or Bailey’s. Okay, it’s sweet upon sweet, but a nice little dessert thing.
Jello shots are a college classic, and because I’ve had to try these for the first time in my life as part of researching this story, I got way too carried away shopping for ingredients. I was in the gelatin-type mix aisle and thought that while I was testing the effect of combining alcohol and Jell-o, I’d grab up a box of chocolate pudding and some instant custard as well. Disgusting as it may sound initially, we thought it was no less disgusting than fruity gelatin shots.
- 2 cups Vodka
- 3 large packages Jell-o (or other similar gelatin dessert) with sugar
- 3 cup Water
Boil 3 cups of water then add Jell-o. Mix Jell-o and water until Jell-o is completely dissolved. Add the 2 cups of vodka and mix together. Pour mixture into small paper cups and chill until firm. Don’t use the plastic cups, as pretty as they are. You can peel the paper cups, but the plastic can do you injury if it cracks. Don’t make the shots too big. There’s a wicked lot of alcohol hiding in there. In fact, cut the recipe way down if you feel like it. If you insist on using sugar-free puddings and gelatins, the set can be damp, so cut back on the water a bit.
Finally, we get to the coolest of suave barware, the ice shot. We first saw these bilberry drinks in ice cubes pictured on the Ice Hotel Ice Bar’s 2002 web site. Being fond of High Style, we decided that we very much like the look of this one though couldn’t quite figure out how they are made unless they used an ice saw and a drill press. You can either buy molds or invent your own overwrought and messy molding method but they probably will be more casual than this slick Ice Bar version.
For the common (and we mean common) man, there is the Arctic IceShot mold which conjures up four tapered cups at a time. These dixie cup shapes are better suited to frat parties than hobnobbing with the Swedish royal family, but we quickly decided that we can live with that, no offense to Carl Gustav and Silvia. On the IceShot fan web site,there is a long running discussion about the freezing temperature of vodka, and fruity concoctions one can make with these forms. A few recipes are repeated in the sidebar.
This past holiday season, Stolichnaya introduced a gift set of vodka and four ice shot molds that seem to be the best bargain for most people. If you know you’ll need more than four of the ice shot molds, you can start making them up well in advance, or buy several of the kits. Clear out a big space in the freezer, as they must stand flat, and you also will want to put the Stoli in the freezer as well.
A special thanks to our own Marcia Tapp, who knows more about Jell-o Shots than anyone should.
Our crack legal team has informed me that I must repeat that the Casual Cook had nothing at all to do with this article, and that Jell-o shots have no place in tasteful company. But of course, she hasn’t had our fantastic “War of 1812 Special” made with Jell-o® Cook-and-Serve Americana custard and rum, or she’d change her tune mighty fast.
Martha Strom has been usurped with some mostly unwelcome help by Leslie Strom and Marcia Tapp
